Trying to stay connected when you’re out traveling isn’t always easy. And carrying a bunch of different devices for specific jobs ends up with a lot of moving pieces, a lot of extra weight, and more things to go wrong.
There are starting to be some new products that try to solve several of these problems at once. They don’t fit easily into a standard category but are rather a bunch of different solutions packed into a single device.
The one I’m focusing on here is the pocket-sized RAVPOWER FILEHUB It includes an SD card reader makes it particularly attractive to photographers.
It’s a device of many talents, but they’re hard to pin a name to. FileHub isn’t especially useful or sexy, but that’s not to say that I can think of a better name. And here’s why–these are the key features of the RAVPower FileHub.
WiFi Hub
The wifi functionality is really to the heart of why this device exists. There are several aspects to it, but the first is that it acts as a wifi hub or personal router.
But it’s important to be clear what it isn’t. By itself it doesn’t provide internet access—it acts as a bridge between your wifi devices and another form of internet access. For instance, you can connect the FileHub to a hotel’s wifi and then connect your phones or computers by wifi to the FileHub to share the hotel’s connection. That can come in handy when hotels limit the number of devices you can use (or charge by the device). You can also connect the FileHub by wifi to a mobile hotspot and then connect your devices by wifi to the FileHub.
But the FileHub is not a mobile hotspot. It doesn’t connect directly to cell networks—you need to arrange that separately. And you can’t easily use it as a traditional router to turn a wired connection into a wifi connection (there’s nowhere to plug in a regular internet cable).
